


lion's den

by encanta



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Preview spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 10:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1385083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encanta/pseuds/encanta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“i can’t protect you from in here, alana,” he says, his tone gaining more than a hint of acid when he adds, “so you could try avoiding the lion’s den from now on.”</p><p>will's reaction to alana's tryst with hannibal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lion's den

She can’t look at him and when she comes around Will finds he can’t look at her and he supposes that was the point of Hannibal’s plan, to alienate him further from the only people he has, and vice versa.

Will doesn’t want to say it’s working but the proof is in how his skin crawls at the smell of her. Never has he felt as caged as he does now, because the distance between the very back corner of his tiny cell and the bars Alana has her hands curled around is not fucking far enough.

Her presence is a dull pain, a knife slipped between his ribs and forgotten there, and there’s just too much to sort through right now, especially with her looking at the ceiling of his cell instead of him. Hannibal is suffocating him. Hannibal is suffocating him through Alana.

Hannibal is winning.

Will’s tucked on the floor, arms slung loosely around his knees, head resting against the wall as he tries to find the words (and the ability to say them). When he finally opens his mouth, no words will come out.

‘Stay away from Hannibal Lecter’ is a little too late, anyway.

Letting out a long, shaking breath, Will closes his eyes and steps into the river, water sloshing his waders as he carries his fishing kit along. It’s so safe here, he thinks. So peaceful. There’s nothing in this river, in these woods that can hurt him. There’s nothing here that could hurt Alana, or Beverly. He flicks his wrist and the lure flies, landing down river with ease. Hannibal may have destroyed his life from the inside out, but he can’t get him here. None of them can.

Hawks coast overhead as the hours pass in his mind, the sun finally starting to set low in the sky. It’s time to leave, but he doesn’t want to. Will casts one more time, his feet shifting against the rocks on the bottom of the river bed, and lets a bite tug hard at his rod. He reels it in gently, teasingly, trepidation mounting in his heart. When the hook breaks out of the water, he lets a breath out through his teeth.

The fish got his bait.

He comes back to himself in that dank corner and shifts a little against the wall, glancing toward the bars. When he makes inadvertent eye contact with Alana, it burns.

It shouldn’t burn. It’s not like she _knows_. Or, rather, it’s not like she believes him. And Lecter was her … her _mentor_. They have _history_.

It’s only the widening of Alana’s eyes that makes Will realize he’s finally started to speak. His mouth snaps shut immediately, hand curling into a fist on his knee.

“Hannibal isn’t the Chesapeake Ripper, Will,” Alana says, and she sounds tired, tired and a little angry. Can Will actually blame her? He wants to, so fucking desperately. There’s a dark part of him, a part empathizing with who-fucking-knows at this point that wants to take her by her throat and squeeze. His brain analyzes that thought and Will jerks violently against the cell wall, turning away from Alana. The betrayal coursing through his veins now is not because of her.

“You need to go,” he says thickly, back to staring at a crack running along the floor. “Before something bad happens.”

It’s an empty threat at best, because he’s in no position to actually physically hurt her and he’d showed his hand too early, r.e his orderly, so that pawn is lost. Still, he’s so scared of himself right now that even if it means letting Hannibal win, he wants Alana to get away from him.

“Go! Get out of here!” His shout stirs some of the other inmates, even as Alana flinches, a reaction he misses as he resolutely looks anywhere but her.

Alana’s silence stretches out for a long second before she shakes her head, tucks a lock of hair out of her face. Her eyes are trained on Will now, on his profile and how his jaw’s set tightly.

“You tried to kill him, Will,” she says, quiet, and he can’t put a finger on the tone of her words. He thinks it might be disappointment, and that makes him snap, anger, helplessness, sadness all coursing through him like one of Chilton’s narcoanalytics. He’s playing right into Hannibal’s hands right now and he can’t stop himself.

“I couldn’t let it happen again.” Beverly flashes in his mind, unsmiling but whole, then flashes again, laid out slice by slice. Something inside him keens so loud it escapes out of his mouth and he curls his fingers up towards his lips like he might shove the sound back in.

When he staggers to his feet and toward the bars, toward Alana, the anger jutting through his posture makes her step back. Breathing heavily, his dark heart caught in his throat, Will curls his fingers around the bars so hard his knuckles turn white.

Alana, for all her humanity and instinctual fear, isn’t a doe. The snap of twigs in the woods from some far off predator doesn’t have her bolting. Instead, she stands her ground, scents the air, her eyes sweeping over Will’s jaw. Part of her doesn’t even recognize him, because maybe part of her doesn’t want to recognize him. The man in front of her is so far gone from the man she kissed, and maybe part of it is her fault.

Still, her voice is soft when she addresses him, and that softness tears at his heart. “Hannibal isn’t the Ripper, Will. You’re going after the wrong man.”

He knows Gideon’s in the next cell, trying not to chuckle. The metal bars are cold under his fingers and then his face as he leans into them, eyes closed, mind drifting back to that fragmented, snowy night.

He’d do anything to protect her. Even now.

“I can’t protect you from in here, Alana,” he says, his tone gaining more than a hint of acid when he adds, “So you could try avoiding the lion’s den from now on.”

Her silence is stony and Will lets his fingers slide down the bars, afraid to let go.

“For me,” he says, quieter, and he knows it sounds more like the sad request of a jealous man than that of someone worried for her life. _Did you see her?_ he wants to ask. _Did you see what he did to Beverly when she got too close_?

There’s clarity then, dazzling behind his eyes, a reprieve from that momentary self-revulsion. His actions may have hurt Alana but his hands will not. The truth lies both in his heart and in Beverly’s grave that Hannibal is the one behind this. Hannibal is the one that has hurt them all so much.

Finally, he looks up at her, feeling brave enough to meet her eyes. They’re a blue he loves to get lost in, a blue he sometimes sees reflected in the choppy sway of his river. Angry as they are right now, angry and so suspicious, they’re still a familiar solace, and Will leans his head against the bars and tries to focus on Alana’s eyes and the curve of her jaw, and not how the wendigo is standing right behind her.

Slowly, reticently, he slips one of his hands through the cell, turning his palm up. She breaks their eye contact to look down at his palm. His offering. The moment stretches out so long and taut that Will almost takes his hand back, until he sees her arm moving slowly. Alana puts her hand on his carefully, like she might break him … or vice versa. They stay still like that for a minute before Will closes her hand in his gently.

The wendigo is still lurking but Alana’s skin is so warm against his that for once in his horrific little life, her vitality is trumping the death standing like a wall behind them. She is a river all her own, a vast lifeline stretching out wondrously through his head.

“I can’t lose you, Alana,” Will says quietly, aware he still sounds like a wounded lover. His thumb finds the tops of her fingers and rubs in slow circles, soothing. There is a wounded lover in there, somewhere, but it is so much more than that.

Her hand tenses in his but Will keeps moving his thumb as he reminds himself that, given her beliefs, her reactions are valid. Her disgust in him is valid. Still, she keeps her hand in his, so he continues quickly. “Maybe you’re starting to reconsider your defenses of me. I’m sure you’re getting tired of telling me Hannibal isn’t the Ripper. Beverly and I did this dance, Alana-“

And he stops, because they _did_ do this dance, the exact same one minus his messy romantic feelings, and pain sears out against his chest because _it is his fault_. Beverly’s gone and it’s his fault, because he kept pressing the issue like a bruise.

“- So I’m not asking you to believe me, because you need proof for belief, and looking for proof got Beverly killed. I … got Beverly killed.”

Alana softens a bit, squeezes his hand ever so slightly. “Beverly’s death was not your fault, Will,” she says, and for once the pity in her voice isn’t so reprehensible. It may not be the truth, but sometimes non-truths are comforting.

Will returns the gentle pressure on her hand, because it’s all he has right now. “If I hadn’t been so adamant…” he starts, closing his eyes. Alana just hangs onto him, quietly letting him sort his feelings out. The rational part of her, the part of her that put distance between them in the very first place, the part that told her she wouldn’t be good for him, nor him for her, tells her to drop his hand and run. She stays, and tells herself it’s okay. Alana is familiar with the frequent irrationality of the human mind.

“Shh,” she soothes, and now it’s her turn to rub her thumb against his skin. There’s a moment where Alana wonders, guiltily, if all of this is just an act. Maybe this man standing in front of her, hand cradled in hers, so scared out of his mind ninety-nine percent of the time, has carved the perfect mask. Maybe it _is_ all a lie. Maybe Chilton is right about him.

But there’s another moment where Alana wonders, the guilt now crashing over her in waves, if maybe Will is right about Hannibal Lecter.

And when he breathes, “I want to save you, too,” against the bars, the ghost of his words touching lightly against her cheeks, all she can do is lean heavily against his cage, the weight of something horrible and indescribable pressing down on her.

Behind them, the wendigo has a hand curled over Alana’s shoulder.


End file.
